WASHINGTON — In confusing whether an ammunition magazine can be reloaded and the difference between that and a clip, Rep. Diana DeGette didn't do gun-control champions — including President Barack Obama — any favors last week.

DeGette, a Democrat from Denver, has been a pivotal leader at the federal level to strengthen the nation's gun laws since she entered Congress in the mid-1990s.

She has, at least three times, introduced legislation to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, and she has signed on to a handful of other gun-control bills that have been introduced in the past year in the wake of the shootings at an Aurora movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.

Yet last week at a public forum hosted by The Denver Post's editorial board, DeGette made one of the largest gaffes of her career on the very issue she purports to be so passionate about, and the comments came at one of the most politically inopportune times for her party.

Asked why banning ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds would be effective in reducing gun violence, DeGette responded:

Advertisement

"These are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those now, they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available."

Magazines, in almost every kind of weapon, can be reloaded.

Then, later in the day, in explaining the mistake, DeGette spokeswoman Juliet Johnson made another one.

"She simply misspoke in referring to 'magazines' when she should have referred to 'clips,' which cannot be reused because they don't have a feeding mechanism," Johnson said.

Clips, too, can be reloaded in almost every instance.

DeGette's comments went viral in social media, and her remarks were replayed on cable television and talk radio and posted on countless blogs throughout the country.

Those on the other side of the issue brandished the comments as proof of a stereotype that the whole of Democrats in Congress are a bunch of liberal elites who have never even used a gun and should stay out of issues they don't know anything about.

"You have the prime sponsor of legislation who is representing her party in Congress who is clearly uninformed about the basic mechanics of the item she wants to further regulate," said University of Colorado political scientist Ken Bickers. "It's death by 1,000 knife cuts, and those can't fit into a magazine."

The timing also couldn't be more poignant.

The nation is embroiled — both within the states and in the nation's Capitol — in a passionate debate about gun rights.

Colorado's legislature has passed three new gun-control laws, including a limit on ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds and stronger background checks. Some of the proponents of those bills have received death threats.

Last week, Obama flew to Denver to project the image of sensibly discussing the issue from a reasoned perspective.

"Part of the reason it's so hard to get this done is because both sides of the debate sometimes don't listen to each other," Obama said at the Denver Police Academy on Wednesday. "You hear some of these quotes: 'I need a gun to protect myself from the government.' 'We can't do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away.' Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you."

In Washington this week, Congress will return from a two-week break and begin the debate on tightening the nation's guns laws — including universal background checks and a possible proposal to ban assault weapons.

A recent CBS News poll shows waning support for tighter gun laws, with 47 percent of people who desire them, compared with 57 percent immediately after the Connecticut school shooting.

The question for those passionately trying to push this legislation forward on Capitol Hill is whether DeGette's comments have impugned her credibility to successfully lobby for the cause.

"It certainly compromised her ability to be a lead spokesperson for the issue, and it compromised the issue itself at the margins," said Denver-based political analyst Eric Sonder-mann. "What you always want to be on the guard against, particularly something as red-hot as the gun debate, is needlessly feeding the other side a simplistic stereotype of you."

He continued: "You'll see her inevitably, due to political reality, have to take a back seat, maybe a passenger seat, on this debate."

DeGette wouldn't answer questions posed by The Post over the weekend on whether she will continue to promote stricter gun control as one of her top issues.

The congresswoman acknowledged in an editorial published Friday that her comments were "inartfully stated." She blamed the politics of the gun lobby for the national attention.

"As I have learned in two decades of work on gun violence prevention issues, the gun lobby takes every opportunity to intimidate, and attempt to silence, anyone who stands up to fight to make our families safer," DeGette wrote. "They have done it for decades, and this week, as I continued my pursuit of common-sense gun violence prevention, I found myself in their sights."

Annmarie Jensen, a gun-control lobbyist at the Colorado state Capitol, said she thinks DeGette's lack of knowledge about guns is representative of the majority of the country.

"She clearly doesn't know her way around the gun," Jensen said. "I think (her) remarks highlight the fact that some people believe the only thing guns are ever used for is violence. She's obviously coming from that perspective. Then there's the farmer, rancher, hunter who thinks of it as a tool."

Jensen noted that one-third of Americans have a gun and said the other two-thirds probably don't know much about them.

"I think people in America are entitled to have opinions about things that we don't know a lot about," she said.

Lockheed says object part of 'sensor technology' testing that ended ThursdayWhat the heck is that thing? It's fair to assume that question was on the minds of many people who traveled along Colo. 128 south of Boulder this week if they happened to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a large, silver projectile perched alongside the highway and pointed north toward town.

PARIS (AP) — Bye, New York! Ciao, Milan! Bonjour, Paris! The world's largest traveling circus of fashion editors, models, buyers and journalists has descended on the French capital, clutching their metro maps and city guides, to cap the ready-to-wear fashion season. Full Story